President-elect Donald Trump won’t succeed in his agenda, get his Cabinet nominees confirmed, secure the border, or extend tax cuts if the Senate shows up for work only 102 days next year, as it did this year. Luckily for Trump, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the incoming majority leader, has set an aggressive schedule for 2025 that will almost double the upper chamber’s number of working days. This is the type of congressional leadership Trump needs from Republicans if he is going to have a successful second term.
This year was an election year, so the Senate was out more than normal. But even in nonelection years, the Senate’s normal has become lackadaisical, with senators not arriving until Monday afternoon, working two days, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then jetting back home on Thursday afternoon. But a three-day workweek is not going to cut it anymore.
Last week, during a Senate Republican retreat at the Library of Congress, Thune introduced a Senate schedule that would have senators working on the Senate floor five days a week, including 179 total days in session, and would start the year with 10 straight weeks of work before the first recess in March. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had the Senate in for only 150 days during President Joe Biden’s first term.
Thune also outlined a plan for two filibuster-proof reconciliation bills next year, the first addressing border security and the second extending the Trump tax cuts. Senate Republicans tried a similar tactic in 2017 but failed miserably on the first reconciliation bill designed to repeal Obamacare. Only then did they pivot to what became the Trump tax cuts.
Democrats tried the same strategy in 2021, first passing a massive COVID stimulus bill on a party-line vote that ended up stoking massive inflation before pivoting to the rest of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, which was eventually whittled down to the inaptly titled Inflation Reduction Act.
Senate Republicans would be wise to remember these past failures as they try to move two reconciliation bills through the Senate instead of one. Complex Senate rules that dictate what policies may be included in a reconciliation bill are interpreted by the Senate parliamentarian and take time to sort out. It is not clear what “direct budgetary effect” legislation on border security and deportation policies will have, which is the key test for setting aside the filibuster.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters the Senate may even try to pass a budget resolution in January before Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20. This is a good first test to see if Senate Republicans can live up to Thune’s plan. If they are able to pass a budget resolution addressing border security and deportations before Trump is sworn in, it would be a good sign they should continue their ambitious two-reconciliation bill plan.
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But if Senate Republicans get bogged down and cannot pass a budget resolution dealing with only the border this January, it would signal that two reconciliation bills will be harder than they realized and that they should just do one tax bill, with as many border items included as possible this year.
The clock is ticking on that tax legislation. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year, and if they are not extended, virtually every taxpayer will pay more. That would be a major policy failure for any administration, but especially a Republican one.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
